Brazilian Political Science Review (BPSR) is a political science journal, published online and in English, that supports the diffusion of high-quality political science work produced both in Brazil and abroad, thus contributing to the exchange of ideas within the international political science community.

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Brazilian Political Science Review (BPSR) is a political science journal, published online and in English, that supports the diffusion of high-quality political science work produced both in Brazil and abroad, thus contributing to the exchange of ideas within the international political science community.

Strategic Coalitions and Agenda-Setting in Fragmented Congresses: How the PRI Sets the Legislative Agenda in Mexico

This essay suggests a theory of strategic legislative agenda control. It argues that a single party can effectively set the agenda under majoritarian gatekeeping rules without obtaining majority or even plurality status. The agenda-setting party need not be the median party in the assembly nor supported by executive-led parliamentary coalitions. The Mexican Chamber of Deputies provides a case study of how majoritarian gatekeeping and political context establish the conditions necessary for one-party-led agenda-setting in a fragmented congress with or without […]

Freedom through form: Bolívar Lamounier and the Liberal Interpretation of Brazilian Political Thought*

This article examines the contribution of Bolívar Lamounier to Brazilian political thought. Our main argument is that, by replacing nationality with freedom as the defining criterion of the real, Bolívar Lamounier offers a liberal interpretation of Brazilian political thought, in direct contrast to the nationalist tradition formulated by Oliveira Vianna. In this view, it is the liberals who are the realists, while nationalists and Marxists are idealists. As we shall see, this interpretation is normatively committed to one side, that […]

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Affirmative Action Attitudes of Whites: Evidence from a List Experiment Survey in Brazil

Recently in Brazil, public policies have begun to be implemented to reduce discrimination and promote the inclusion of excluded social groups based on a specific individual characteristic: race. However, there is little public consensus about such policies, especially among whites. In this work, I look at the racial attitudes towards affirmative action among white college students. I make use of new research methods for the empirical study of socially sensitive issues and ask whether these attitudes stem from prejudice, conflicts […]

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Representation, Epistemic Democracy, and Political Parties in John Stuart Mill and José de Alencar

John Stuart Mill and José de Alencar lived at the same time and wrote about the same issues, and yet the connections between their political theories remain unexplored. Seeking to offer a comparison of both theories, this article argues that reading Mill’s “Considerations on Representative Government” (1977b) vis-à-vis Alencar’s “Systema representativo” (1868) brings to the fore two aspects of Mill’s political theory that Mill scholars usually overlook: 01. political representation is endowed with constructivist power; 02. epistemic democracy and agonistic […]

International Assistance and Security Sector Reform in Latin America: A Profile of Donors, Recipients and Programs

This article seeks to understand the demands of the security sector in Latin America, in the context of reforms promoted by international aid agencies in the region. The hypothesis of this study is that international aid programs focused on Security Sector Reform (SSR) in Latin America have been generic, and have overlooked recipient countries’ own reform agendas. Latin American perspectives on SSR have been inferred from Organization of American States (OAS) documents. Information on international assistance for SSR programs was […]

Preparing the Terrain: Conditioning Factors for the Regionalization of the Vote for Federal Deputy in São Paulo

This article proposes a new interpretation of the regional distribution of votes in the dispute for legislative offices in Brazil. The literature has traditionally understood regionalization to be evidence that politicians deliberately create zones of influences in certain areas. We argue, however, that other dimensions of the Brazilian electoral system, notably the large size and magnitude of electoral districts, reinforce the information that reaches voters and adds value to geographic aspects, such as the home city of the candidates, accounting […]

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Can Hashtags Change Democracies?

Cass Sunstein has had a long and distinguished academic career in the field of behavioral economics, teaching at prestigious universities such as the University of Chicago and Harvard (the latter to this day). Alongside his career as a professor and researcher, it is also worth noting that between 2009 and 2012 Sunstein worked as administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs during the Obama administration. Obama’s first presidential campaign is recognized worldwide as a turning point […]

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Diplomacy as an Independent Variable

A few years ago, I was commissioned by a Dutch publisher to compose a short biography of Rubens Ricupero for an editorial project on former secretaries-general of international organizations (). This offered me the chance to interview this scholarly, polite, and sober character with an impressive career within both domestic and global bureaucracies. It is difficult not to be charmed by his personality. Therefore, like Homer’s Ulysses, I confess I had to tie myself to the mast so as not […]

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Erratum

The Editor-in-Chief of the Brazilian Political Science Review manifests that the funding information of the article entitled Multi-level governance in federal contexts: the Social Assistance Policy in the City of São Paulo, authored by Renata Bichir, Gabriela Horesh Brettas and Pamella Canato, was omitted from the original publication. The first footnote of the article must read: * […]